Biographies
of Prominent Quebec and Canadian

Historical Figures

Édouard
Hamon

(1841-1904)

Damien-Claude Bélanger,

Department of History,

McGill University

Clergyman
and playwright, was born at Vitré, in Brittany, France.
He was educated at Angers and at Saint-Acheul, France.
In 1861 he entered the Society of Jesus and taught history and grammar
at the Collège de Vaugirard and at l'École libre de Metz from 1865 to 1868. He immigrated
to North America in 1868 and lectured briefly at Fordham
College, New
York's Jesuit University,
before coming to teach at Montreal's Collège Sainte-Marie, where
he would remain until 1879. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest
at Woodstock, Maryland,
in 1872 and took his final Jesuit vow in 1878. Though nominally attached
to the Montreal
parish of l'Immaculée-Conception, Hamon would dedicate the next
several years to preaching retreats throughout Canada and the United
States. He was instrumental in the
creation of the popular Ligue du Sacré-Coeur and served as the
superior of the Jesuit Order's Quebec
City residence from 1897 to 1900.
He returned to itinerant preaching at the turn of the century and died
while preaching a retreat at Leeds, Quebec,
in 1904. Like most of Quebec's
clergymen, Father Hamon was deeply concerned by the emigration
of French Canadians to New England . A popular preacher, he had
spent a great deal of time in New England's petits Canadas
and was familiar with the emigrant's plight. In 1882 he published Exil
et patrie, a play that condemned emigration and promoted the colonization
of the Ottawa Valley.
However, he is best remembered for his seminal Les Canadiens-Français de la Nouvelle-Angleterre (1891), an essay that denounced
emigration, but that nevertheless portrayed the emigrant as an instrument
of God's will. Indeed, his providential interpretation of emigration
played a significant role in changing the highly negative attitude that Quebec's
elite had held of the emigrant. Like Edmond de Nevers, Father Hamon believed
that the United States would eventually break up, and that several new republics would emerge
from its ashes. This disintegration,
coupled with the rapid expansion of Franco-America, lead him to prophesize
that "qu'avant longtemps, les deux fractions du peuple Canadien (sic),
celle qui habite la terre des ancêtres et celle qui a déjà
franchi la frontière américaine, se rejoindront et pourront
alors se donner la main pour ne plus former qu'un seul peuple."